Oxford
DVD: American FriendsTuesday, 20 November 2012
Michael Palin's adventures in period drama as star and co-writer, with director Tristram Powell, pass a pleasant if forgettable hour and a half. The main thread – repressed Englishman loosens up abroad – links other familiar elements: the closeted... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Ride, Juliette Gréco, Krzysztof Komeda, Priscilla ParisSunday, 19 August 2012
Ride: Going Blank AgainKieron TylerWhen Oxfordshire’s Ride arrived in the shops via Creation Records, they were the sonic little brothers to label-mates My Bloody Valentine. But their second album, 1992’s Going Blank Again, ploughed its own path,... Read more... |
Wonderland: Young, Bright and on the Right, BBC TwoFriday, 10 August 2012
In the debating chambers and committee rooms of the Conservative Associations of Oxford and Cambridge lurk the Children of Cameron. The current cabinet is to a large extent an Oxbridge Old Boys club and succeeding generations are already being... Read more... |
L'Olimpiade, Garsington OperaMonday, 04 June 2012
Despite ever-more determined attempts by musicologists to broaden the baroque repertoire of our opera houses, Handel still very much has things his own way. But in this Olympic year a sly challenge has emerged from Antonio Vivaldi’s L’Olimpiade –... Read more... |
CD: Message to Bears - Folding LeavesWednesday, 08 February 2012
Oxford's Message to Bears project – a fluid collective around one Jerome Alexander – is one of music's best-kept secrets. In one and a half albums in 2008-9, Alexander created a new kind of ambient music: floating, rarefied chamber pieces in which... Read more... |
Art Gallery: Egyptian and Nubian Galleries, Ashmolean MuseumFriday, 25 November 2011
The Ashmolean Museum opens the doors to its Egyptian and Nubian galleries tomorrow and in these six refurbished rooms you’ll be able to see one of the greatest collections (among some 40,000 antiquities) outside Cairo. Designed by the architect Rick... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Choreographer Christopher WheeldonSaturday, 15 October 2011
Those of us un-Zeitgeisty enough to miss the Royal Ballet’s first new full-length ballet in 20 years during its first run can now catch up. Opus Arte’s DVD release of the televised Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland tells a different story from the... Read more... |
Shared Experience: sharing the workTuesday, 05 July 2011
Shared Experience is certainly living up to its name; in a radical departure from normal theatre conventions, the company is currently sharing part of its rehearsal process with audiences as it develops Helen Edmundson’s latest work, Mary Shelley,... Read more... |
Morse/Lewis/Hathaway: vote in our heretical Facebook pollMonday, 11 April 2011There is an intriguing heresy planted several paragraphs down in Adam’s review of Lewis, which resumed last night on ITV. “It’s the relationship between Lewis and Hathaway that makes the thing worth watching. In fact, it sometimes seems more... Read more... |
Lewis, ITV1Sunday, 10 April 2011
Read Adam Sweeting's review of "Intelligent Design", the last-ever episode of LewisAlthough its steepling body count is almost enough to rival the trail of carnage in The Walking Dead (which rose from the grave on 5 last night after its original... Read more... |
Summary of main Arts Council winners and losersWednesday, 30 March 2011A sliderule of 11-15 per cent reductions in annual grants by 2015, compared with this year, has been applied to Britain's major orchestras, opera, dance, theatre and music organisations. One major gainer is London's Barbican Centre - one major loser... Read more... |
Giselle, Royal Ballet/ Swan Lake, Russian State Ballet of SiberiaWednesday, 12 January 2011
The chasm between the top-class ballet available to London-area ballet-goers and the low-grade stuff peddled in the regions is the field where the battle to save ballet’s soul is nightly won or lost. Nothing could be more dispiriting than to see the... Read more... |
